Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)

Infrastructure & Smart Cities

• Street lighting control and monitoring.
• Parking occupancy and traffic sensing.
• Bridge, tunnel, and structural health monitoring.
• Environmental quality and air pollution sensors.

Buildings & Campuses

• HVAC, temperature, humidity, and CO₂ sensing.
• Occupancy and presence detection for lighting control.
• Leak detection, asset monitoring, and security sensors.
• Energy usage metering at floor or equipment level.

Industrial & Utilities

• Vibration and condition monitoring of rotating machinery.
• Pipeline, tank, and valve monitoring.
• Substation and distribution equipment sensors.
• Factory safety, gas, and environmental sensing.

Agriculture & Environment

• Soil moisture, fertilizer, and salinity sensing.
• Micro-climate monitoring across large fields.
• Irrigation control nodes and actuator control.
• Wildlife and habitat monitoring networks.

Standards-Based WSN

Standards such as Wi-SUN (802.15.4g/802.15.4e) and related profiles provide multi-vendor interoperability, defined PHY/MAC behavior, and long-term ecosystem support. They are well suited to utility, city, and industrial deployments where interoperability and long-term maintainability are mandatory.

• Predictable coexistence behavior and channel plans.
• Multi-vendor hardware and software ecosystem.
• Better alignment with regulatory and certification programs.

Proprietary WSN Protocols

Proprietary or semi-proprietary WSN protocols build on similar PHYs but use custom MAC and network layers. They are often chosen when extreme battery life, minimal latency, or very specific application behaviors are required, and a single system integrator controls both ends of the link.

• Optimizable for a single application or environment.
• Freedom to tune data rate, modulation, and duty cycles.
• Simplified stacks for ultra-low-cost, high-volume nodes.

Sub-GHz WSN

• Superior range and penetration through walls and obstacles.
• Better performance in basements, utility vaults, and plant floors.
• Suited for low data-rate sensing and control traffic.
• Typically fewer channels but less congested than 2.4 GHz ISM.

Sub-GHz is often the preferred choice for infrastructure, industrial, and utility WSN deployments where link margin and robustness matter more than peak throughput.

2.4 GHz WSN

• Globally available unlicensed band.
• Smaller antennas, useful in compact devices.
• Higher achievable data rates for firmware updates or logs.
• Shared with Wi-Fi and BLE, requiring careful coexistence design.

2.4 GHz is attractive where compact form factors and global SKUs are critical, or where nodes are part of a broader Wi-Fi/BLE ecosystem inside buildings or campuses.

Single-SoC WSN Node

• RF transceiver IP and MCU/DSP share the same die.
• Lowest BOM cost and smallest form factor at high volume.
• Best opportunity to optimize for ultra-low power and fast wake-up.
• Requires closer coordination between RF and digital design teams.

In this model, SaberTek IP such as SBR6301-WSN is integrated alongside your MCU, memory, and security blocks to form a custom WSN SoC.

2-Chip WSN Platform

• Discrete RF transceiver die plus a separate MCU or SoC.
• Greater flexibility to reuse existing digital platforms.
• Simpler migration across process nodes or product families.
• Module vendors can mix and match RF and controller devices.

In this case, SaberTek provides the RF/mixed-signal die as IP (for integration) or as the basis for a discrete transceiver chip, connected to your preferred controller via SPI, QSPI, or other digital interfaces.

Security Considerations

• Protection against eavesdropping and packet injection.
• Reliable entropy sources for key generation and randomization.
• Secure association and re-keying of nodes in the field.
• Authenticated, encrypted over-the-air firmware updates.

SaberTek IP Support

SaberTek RF and data converter IP is designed to integrate cleanly with secure MCUs, secure elements, or custom digital security blocks. Low-jitter synthesizers and stable RF paths help maintain the performance of security-sensitive modulation and coding schemes.

On the system level, our customers typically implement encryption, authentication, and key management in the MAC/network layers, while the SaberTek RF IP provides robust, repeatable analog behavior needed for secure links.

Node Cost vs. Network Cost

• A slightly higher-performance sub-GHz transceiver may allow fewer gateways and repeaters, reducing overall system cost.
• Longer battery life directly reduces truck rolls and maintenance costs over the deployment lifetime.
• Standards-based WSN can lower integration and software costs at the system integrator level.

SoC vs. Module Economics

• At very high volumes, a custom SoC with integrated SaberTek RF IP often achieves the lowest per-unit cost.
• For mid-volume products or fast time-to-market, a 2-chip design or module-based approach (built around a SaberTek-based RF die) can be more economical overall.
• Multi-band IP like SBR6201 supports multiple WSN and IoT SKUs from a single RF design, reducing NRE and qualification cost.